Just Add Fuel
by Zaedah
Summary: Or... the snooze button versus the punctuality of victims.
1. Rocket Fuel

**_My plot bunny returned to Earth from his planetary orbit and dropped this in my lap. Better not to ask..._  
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"I'm just saying."

Despite her conviction to avoid the motion for an entire day, Ziva rolls her sleep-caked eyes. Which sets off tiny sparks behind the dense wall of her headache. He makes her do that, strain against vows and the sanctity of common sense. It's ten minutes beyond the six am alarm and five minutes past the reasonable self-promise to perform no functions that will pour rocket fuel down the throat of the idling migraine.

His grin is the opening volley for many a skirmish.

When she separates her tongue from the roof of her mouth, she musters this; "I have observed that people use that phrase to defend a notion for which they have no actual defense."

But Tony isn't one to be driven off-course by something as fundamental as logic. Reason would only be noticed if it arrived on long legs and bought him a drink. And then he'd charm it into a nonsensical stupor. They had a word for men like him back home but her mother forbid such language.

"Defense I have," he notes with unearned pride. "What I don't have is cooperation."

She would gladly cooperate with physics, which predicts that the toaster will need little force to slam nicely into his head. There would be a satisfying thunk, followed by an unconscious man, which would be equally pleasing. But the appliance has other duties this morning and thus she considers a verbal assault. A threat both brilliant and deadly is constructed in her head but sadly contains is too many syllables for the hour. Therefore an all-purpose grunt serves as warning.

A useless endeavor. The recipient only notices pointed sound effects during climactic parts of cinema.

"Should I outline the argument again?"

"No," Ziva mumbles in haste, knowing that repetition will merely sprinkle sugar on his enthusiasm.

And his... enthusiasm needs no sweetening. Its framework is visible beneath pricey sheets that her restless sleep had tangled mercilessly. Her clothes are laid out upon the wrinkled fabric, a proclamation of her intent to proceed with a day that Tony has not decided to join. Only oil paintings feature the kind of luxuriant reclining that he's undertaking. But she's not giving in.

It's still dark on his side of the bed. A half-opened curtain washes her portion in vibrant, cursed morning. They'll be late. And later still if his opposition prevails. It won't, because his rationale is silly.

"You'd be contributing to the salvation of the planet."

Actually she'll be contributing to Gibbs' wrath.

"I will shower later," Ziva announces during her struggle with her shirt, realizing only when the task is complete that something has gone rather broccoli-shaped. In the spirit of a toddler experimenting with self-dressing, the shirt hem arrives at her naked waist at varying lengths. The vastly interested man watches her fingers tug each rabbit from its hole, waits for the inevitable reveal.

Frustration muddles her radar, Tony's position lost in the sweep of irritation. A blink and he's behind her, large hands snatching her quest for cover, finding skin and repeating his request with lips that God made to test the resolve of the righteous.

"It'll cure your ills," the devil swears. "While saving water and thus earning you the praise of tree-huggers everywhere. And my own praise will be... loud." Cobwebs have no chance to collect on that grin. "Your planet needs you, Agent David."

Turning to face the embers of her losing battle, Ziva's fingers abandon the attempt to cling to the shirt he's trying to relocate and instead grip his... enthusiasm.

"It's not just the planet that needs me."

"Astute." His voice thickens to soup as her eyes flicker to the bathroom. The shower curtain is new, a tasteful French design that she'd selected. It had been her first stamp on his dwelling. The open door beckons like a buffet of chocolate. And it's possible that she hates this man for being so convincing. His body serves as a fine landscape for cascading water, which is problematic when attempting to maintain a staunch refusal.

They'll need non-coordinating, irrefutable excuses for dual tardiness that won't place the billboard of 'couple' over them. Except their boss isn't stupid . This is the third day in a row and Ziva considers that her partner wants to be caught. And damn, that _shouldn't_ turn her on...

Apparently he keeps powerful defenses against responsibility under his pillow. Because it's her feet moving backwards, pulling him toward decadence in a fit of strident cooperation.

"Cure my headache, DiNozzo. Or _I'm just saying_ everything to Gibbs., And I do mean everything."

Then there's tile at her back, water on his lashes and her anti-eye-rolling vow is broken yet again.


	2. Chaos Theory

**_If there's a logic to this fic, it has not introduced itself to me..._  
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**2  
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"Where's Abby?"

Despite the assurance of scientists that this is actually an ordered universe, it's possible for a normal human to discover that the chaos theory applies solely to his existence. In this case, the solid form of Agent DiNozzo has been rendered an apparition. Like a sauce left on the fire too long, he's become a scalded reduction. Which might explain why he's scouring the room for a companion. Ziva is not serving that role, her nose nearly pushing through the computer screen as if one can escape into cyberspace by physically merging with the monitor. The director's office door tries to hold in the sounds of an argument, Vance and Gibbs playing dominant mountain ram over protocol gone slightly swervy. And McGee refuses to supply Tony's need for a target by simply not being here.

The bullpen features two people, one attacking financial records like the reports are personally offensive while the other ponders how to incinerate a stack of mug shots with a coffee-bleary gaze.

So far, not so much as a smolder.

His gut has already marked the perp with a shiny red arrow. A certain black-booted, pigtailed vision had agreed with his assessment. Might have even hugged him for it. Few things compare to hearing 'you're right' in adoring tones. And so he calls down to the lab once more, hears the buzz of a line unanswered. There's an epic huff before he repeats;

"Where's Abby?"

This new ghostly existence persists in the blatant ignorance of his partner. That she hasn't nudged her mouse in the last three minutes tells him it's not an engrossment in the data that keeps her from responding.

"Are we not talking?" Tony finally asks, braving the minefield. "I thought that was yesterday."

"Yesterday we were not touching."

Some days it's possible for Ziva to be kind, as long as one's definition of _some_ equals _never_. He remains behind his desk because a crucial part of conversation is shielding. "And why was that again?"

"Because your hand traveled improperly."

Truth is occasionally dirtier than imagination. "I saved that horse!"

"You were the one who fed it the apple."

Truth also likes long walks, umbrella drinks and treading on his dignity. "Since when do horses choke on apples?"

Now the mouse moves, but only because she slams it. "We were warned that the animal was elderly."

"So I should've automatically assumed it had no teeth? I'll start my first business venture in the under-served field of equine dentures." The phone jumps into his hand, an appendage still tacky from repeated sanitization. In his defense, performing a smash-and-grab version of bobbing for apples was a better option than the Kiss of Life. "It helped solve the case, you'll recall."

"What we know and what we can prove are separated by the work some of us are not doing."

"I work better when I'm praised," he mutters as the lab continues to defy his calls. Rising, Tony notes the barren halls and decides to seek company elsewhere. "So where's Abby?"

"Undertaking an autopsy."

He's already walking toward the hallway, his feet managing three steps before her verbal slip became his physical trip. For all the corrections he's made to Ziva's English, there should be an honorary degree on his wall.

"I hope that's her location and not her vocation. And where's Probie?"

"I can speak the language, you know. She's _doing_ an autopsy. And McGee said something about numbering pigeons..." The thought trails in the wake of proving his point.

Counting his chickens, which is the phrase his mind supplies, makes no additional sense. Which must show on his face.

With a careless hand she waves Tony's stare away. "Something to do with mathematics and birds. I wasn't listening."

Sad, wretched story of his life.

The autopsy is a rather messy affair, it turns out. It's not the gore of slopped blood, but a tangle of laughably fluffy innards. The prosector is awash in corporeal contents, which to Tony's judgment is fairly endearing. Abby's goggles catch the overhead light as she lifts a crucial organ to the sky, scrutinizing it. Meanwhile, nondescript intestinal bits are carried by staunch gravity to the floor, the relocation initiated by her weaving elbow. Were this any other dissection, he'd be vomiting. Instead he grabs a loose sterile glove, scoops up the fallen particle where it perches on her platform boot and returns it to the table.

"Making my case for me, Miss Scuito?"

"No, I don't think Gibbs is interested in your excuses, Tony." Her bright lips are licked as the forceps dive back into the body. "Oh, you mean the case-case."

"Probably?" He hedges. Abby-speak can be a difficult trail to hike. "What did you mean?"

"Nothing." The head shake is too firm, sending pigtails into orbit. Tony frowns. If she starts rambling, there's trouble. "Anyway, I pulled some interesting fibers off this poor ragged beast. I mean, this thing's like a Halloween mecca of playground abuse. All tangly and disintegraty. I mean, it's like a Tim Burton prop. Check out the hair..."

"Gibbs knows." It would have been a question if Tony wasn't already making calculations about how fast he can run.

The damaged doll is pushed aside, Abby's eyes doing the Disney sympathy thing, which is two levels more potent than the Precious Moments gaze. He hates this look. It's what the audience gives Bambi's mother before...

"Sorry, Tony. But the 'separate car' thing only works when you arrive at different times."

Okay, so smart people occasionally wash their brains down the drain during those water-preserving showers. The floor is vastly more intriguing than people realize, hence his sudden, consuming interest in its composition. Honestly, it's like admitting a misdeed to one's little sister, though he's not sure if its her intuitive sense or her possible disappointment that bothers him more.

"How bad is it?"

"You were doing good right up until you were both late Tuesday. Again. Asking Gibbs not to notice a pattern is like assuming the Pope would ignore a forked tail."

What he shouldn't say is, "Does no one care about the planet?"

Because what she says is, "And later I expect details on what _that_ means. But right now I'm proving your killer took our dead toddler by examining her doll. Which, you'll notice, is still in four hundred pieces and Gibbs wants a fiber analysis yesterday and he's so gonna kill you two and it's only fun when I get to watch. The killing, I mean, not the caring about Terra Firma."

"Do you breathe?" This is his way of saying thank you, though for what he's not sure.

And with her eyes freshly returned to the disassembled tot toy, Abby gestures toward the door. "Go stop crime. And also plan the funeral."

_Death by vicious head slap._ "Weep mightily for me?"

"Gnashing of teeth and inappropriate knee highs are assured."

The walk back to the bullpen is accompanied by a spaghetti western soundtrack in his head. A long journey to the short rope of the gallows. The financial records that held Ziva's hand all morning have been replaced by a rummage through her backpack. She's pulling things out, laying them neatly on the desktop and digging trenches of worry around her mouth.

"Perhaps I left it..." And then she piles everything back in only to remove them again as though a reenactment of an OCD scavenger hunt will alter the outcome. A fractional glance is spared to her partner. "My hair tie has been tractor beamed into the vortex, or whatever the nerd terminology is."

Tony shakes hands with resignation, accepts its business card and promises to call again soon.

"Here." The quested black scrunchie is yanked from a side pocket of his own pack. Looking both ways before handing it over, Tony realizes the futility of the effort. They're as good as busted anyway.

Even as Ziva stuffs the tie into the corner of her mouth, fingers prepping her hair for confinement, she unleashes a third hand to aim the detection gun at him. "Gibbs knows?"

Slumping at his desk, Tony opts for fatalism. "I want no less than Armani for my burial suit."

"Perhaps the death sentence will be commuted if we just confess." Creating a ponytail so tight as to immobilize her forehead, Ziva shrugs. "I'm just saying..."

"Which is what people say when they have no actual defense," Tony reminds her.

The director's door opens, a silver-haired steam engine barrels out and both agents are on their feet, anticipating an order or a condemnation.

"With me," the boss barks.

In a rustle of fabric and panic their backpacks are gathered, guns holstered and glances exchanged. Each set of eyes announces the same thing; _I won't break if you won't._ There will be an elevator ride, a car ride and possibly a ride to the E.R. if either cracks. Confined spaces make fabulous interrogation rooms.

Confession, she says. But sometimes the smallest fire needs no added fuel to burn bystanders to cinders.


	3. Voodoo Doll

**The alternating view continues with the next exciting (ish) installment...  
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**3**

The calm is a pin shoved into her voodoo doll.

So far a warrant is the sole thing that Gibbs has executed and this is troubling. Not that she greets the evening hours with an eagerness for bloodshed, but a passing mention, a poignant gripe or some form of rule refresher should have accompanied the day. This is either acceptance or the hush before the hurricane.

Accomplices should have the decency to look worried.

For no other reason than guilt, Ziva feels like the ringleader of their crime and Tony, the human form of sin's complexity, stands at a broken window, letting moonlight filter between torn Venetian blinds to cast aspersions on her claim that he started it. No one this handsome, his posture declares, could lead someone else astray. His reputation notwithstanding.

When the conversation with Abby had been detailed via discreet text messages during the hunt for clues, Ziva could see the dread in his composition. Mobile shorthand had become lengthy, spelled-out dissertation on the many ways he was a dead man. Tiny letters on her screen would have made a passable suicide note.

The public image is a different matter.

Suspect number two's home is the size of a trash bin and yet no link is found to the dead child. Which doesn't deter Gibbs' certainty. Meanwhile his senior agent is sticking to the gut feeling that had been birthed during a near-fatal horse snack. Smudging the marker lines of reasonable boundaries, Tony had picked a fight with Gibbs in the elevator to prove his point. And again in the car about a central piece of evidence that will intrigue a jury despite the lack of substance.

Nudges in the ribs had failed to silence him. The DiNozzo Oblivion should be trademarked.

Except now, with their desks threatening to revolt over the weight of unfinished reports, the fight has fled the man. A pencil begins a rotation from end to end in his hand, his eyes straining to maintain their present direction. Down. Decidedly down and away from whatever passage Gibbs might stalk through. Ziva is halfway through a banana when the revelation sees her spitting out yellow bits in a coughing fit that stops Tony's pencil routine.

The time spent dangerously defending his suspect over Gibbs' heir apparent wasn't about the killer. It was a distraction.

If Gibbs is forced to argue his beliefs on a crime, there's little oxygen left in the room to sustain an assault on their rumored activities. Damn, she's nearly proud of him.

Reigning in their mutual fidgeting succeeds in flooding the space between them with unspent energy, scalding the muted carpeting ad ratcheting her notice of his shirt. Gray does nice things to his eyes. Her morning headaches may have a potent cure but the evening ones are more difficult to relieve. Because ducking into the restroom in their traditional fashion will spray gasoline on the gossip fire. But worry is not an unpleasant look for him. At the very least, it shows he is capable of adult concern. Mostly for his life.

It's understandable, but she's been watching the ladies room, noting the times of occupation and emptiness. Like now.

Distraction indeed.

That's all this was supposed to be; an extension of the verbal thread, a progression of stresses and a resolution to supposition. No one gets hurt. No one finds out. Even if one tramples through the delicate heather, the path of destruction is difficult to track. Such is the resilience of nature. Thus they'd started out so carefully, slipping across the minefield with trust that deliberate movement will see their secret safely to the other side. They're trained investigators, right? As long as they continue to show hourly disdain and pent-up tension to the others, there should be no discovery that said tension has a functional relief valve.

Blame for the recent slips can be laid at his door, the one his grin coaxes her through repeatedly. Only now Tony follows her through the entry, cautious but willing. Freedom arrives with confinement, locked into their own stupidity like criminals scheming amongst the guards. Gleeful and damned all the same. The restroom lacks witnesses, cameras and sadly soundproofing.

The third time he tries to speak, a task made tricky with her invading tongue, the question is a cold water bath. "What're we gonna do?"

"Change nothing. Codes are more like guidelines, isn't that what the pirate movie says?"

"Dear God, she's quoting films." It's a supplication heavenward even as he relieves a few of her buttons from duty.

"Come what may?" She's asking for loyalty to this nameless, misshaped thing but something too warm spreads across his face.

"Gotta work on word choice."

"Or we can forgo words?" The suggestion comes with a mental note to remember that his belt has just been kicked under the sinks. While she has far too much sense to let this go where Harlequin says it must, there's something to be said for the workplace aphrodisiac.

Only he's experiencing a stronger moment of sense, rare thing. "Not here." A warning belayed by his fingers inching below her waistband. "We're in enough trouble."

"Based on the nothing we've heard from Gibbs?" When did she trade down to the mantle of rebel?

The rationale works because he reclaims his rightful crown and bites down hard on her neck, the vacuum of his mouth dragging blood to the surface. Marking her. She might have murmured his name or shouted an obscenity, might have sent out a beckon and flashed the bat signal. There's something about that hand, lately scrubbed clean of horse drool and recently carving designs on her bare thigh, something about the texture and the placement that offers an engraved, gold-leaf invitation to what McGee would label the dark side.

She is a citizen of that darkness now, eyes squeezed shut against that. Right. There. If they're already caught and condemned, she'll be damned if this should be hidden. Let them question, cite regs and threaten. She's already picked out the curtains she'll hang in hell.

And they match his eyes.


	4. Vast Carnage

**Just Add Fuel **

**4**

Enthusiasm is contagious... like a wretched, debilitating disease.

Of course, he has trouble remembering why that's important when his head comes into resounding contact with the underside of a counter top. Her enthusiasm had knocked his belt beneath the sink and with it, her bra. The resulting throb in his skull matches the banging on the door beat for beat.

"Not subtle, you guys." Abby's voice pushes past the solid door in a comic whisper-yell that proves that anger can also be prudent. That voice will make her future children cringe in their goth-onesies.

Ziva waits until the thunking clop of Abby's boots attests to lengthening distance, waits until Tony adjusts what she'd barely touched, which makes for such unfulfilled eroticism, waits until her breathing loses the steam train staccato. And then waits for him to go first, since the bullet rarely hits the person huddled behind a larger target.

The pair of them; alternately brave and cowardly. No wonder they're so smitten.

They tried so hard to keep this non-thing away from work that they ended up bringing it to work and it can't happen again because nine lives he hath not and death is never a flattering look and when the hell did he start thinking in rants?

Back to their desks and Tony tries to throw speed bumps in front of the rampant vehicle his worry is steering. When the dismissal comes with a fast-striding boss who appears to be outrunning his own curiosity, Tony lets Ziva head to the parking garage first. And it's his turn to wait, the cell phone taking an ecological shift to finally light with a message.

_/My place?/_

This is that awkward moment where a decision must be bludgeoned into shape with a heavy club. Is the ship already listing? Will lifeboats need to be employed? Who forgot to notice the silver-topped iceberg? _Come what may_, she said. But when exactly does _what_ seal the sarcophagus?

The cleared throat wafting in from the right announces that his eyes are expected somewhere other than the blank reply screen he's been filling only mentally. The message goes unanswered and Tony finds that paternal sternness is a look best left off McGee's face. Probie can't quite pull it off, the features sliding into an imitation of moldy pizza dough.

"You gonna respond to that?" McDominos asks in a voice that should be designated 'the bite before the whine.'

"You gonna hack into my cell to read it?"

Arms fold over a chest growing more narrow by the day. Tony's been meaning to mention that. And by mention, he means mock.

"We have to be here at 6 am tomorrow. Which means you should probably just car pool."

The ire is raised first, followed by the tattered flag of truce because if he argues now, Ziva will have time to change her locks.

"I'm touched that you wanna share a ride, McFossilFuel, but I have other plans."

"Yeah, which brings me to intentions."

God, it's laughable when a marshmallow tries to sell a tough exterior. Regardless of how crisp the outside, the inside only gets more gooey. "What brought you to intentions is your nerd-discount bus pass."

Indignation will succeed in hardening the eyes a bit. Tony's not so much intimidated as intrigued by the play at fierceness that's evoked by protecting Ziva's chastity. She's a magnet for misplaced guards who stand at her gate wishing to shield the cartoon damsel from harm. Instead, Tony sees a world that could benefit from protection from her.

"How long's this been going on?"

"How badly do you need to write another book?"

McGee takes a deliberate step forward, gaining ground that Tony doesn't remember relinquishing. The cell has been blatantly quiet, his lack of response likely only firming her conviction to introduce the headache ploy tonight. This sparring is playing eminent domain with his time. Tony's up, demanding that his captor note the size difference.

"Look, I'm just asking..."

"You know what, McVance, when they give you the office upstairs, you can interrogate me." The arrogance of seniority is allowed to circle the room. He's not bothering to deploy rule seven because he's tired and crafting specific lies to please the audience is best reserved for undercover. "Can I go now, Director Timmy?"

"I'm just asking for an explanation. She's my coworker, too." The daggers Tim means to shoot from his eyes are more like foam darts. But even harmless projectiles can leave a mark. "And I mean, maybe you need someone to talk to."

Yes, the ear of a therapist might be useful. _Hi, I'm sleeping with my partner casually because we're not equipped for more than that. Wanna hear about the dysfunction we feast on?_

"And you'll be ready for that conversation when you hit puberty, young man."

"So you're admitting it?" As if breaking a prickly suspect, McGee's triumph is a practically scent in the room. Apparently victory smells of cold coffee and burned wiring.

"I forgot the question." A half-truth.

Packing up, Tony eyes the elevator, calculating the steps between him and the door. McGee hovers in offended stance off to Tony's right, not close enough to dare a block. Not that Tony would expect the junior agent to keep this talk going by physical aggression.

"Besides," Tony says around a mouthful of Red Bull, "appointing yourself Ziva's security detail only fuels her acrimony." Yup, he just tossed out a Webster's Word of the Day. "Weapons of Vast Carnage don't need babysitters."

Which is essentially admitting to it. Or something in 'it's' vicinity.

"Just looking out for her interests." Tim's confidence, a flighty thing on any day, has turned the dial of his voice toward uncertain, sentences now carrying the luggage of apology.

"Any investigator would detect that it's _my_ interests that need surveillance."

Deadly, his pale lily. Fingers quickly send a response, spelling suffering in the haste of his departure.

_/Held upp. Probi playinh gibs. Leavibg now/_

In no special hurry the elevator inches toward ground level, the car is started and the phone is vibrating. Her reply. Given the pains this day has taken to torture him, Tony allows two traffic lights to pass before glancing at his cell. A stop sign witnesses his version of a rolling stop while the message is opened with all the caution afforded a ticking package.

Damn, he should have stopped completely. It would have saved the swerve.

_/naked – not for u/_

_/wht I do?/_

_/Caved 2 probie's simpering glare/_

Who takes the time to lob 'simpering' into a text message? She must be relaxed, sipping vodka in a bubble-plenty tub that extends no invitation to tardy lovers. The steering wheel is pivoted by nearly-steady knees, freeing both hands for the defense.

_/made up 4 it w/ rousing vocab/_

The screen is a black hole as the journey is concluded. The key still works, a sign of her vengeful wrath's bad planning. He's wrong about the tub and she lies about the naked. There's a fresh bowl of pasta steaming to one side of the table and she waits at the other. Dear God, it's the rare _let's talk_ face.

McGee will never see daylight again.


	5. Mad Skills

**Just Add Fuel**

**5**

"Does that have relevance to this discussion?"

It's a question that never strays far from the roof of Ziva's mouth, as though hiding in the rafters. There's something fused into the DNA of this free society that reaches out for the most banal phrases and indelicately plops the nonsense into every conversation.

Tony's confusion at her bewilderment is fitted around a mouthful of her starched offering. "Huh?"

"I fail to see the significance of religion in this matter."

He reigns in the sigh but not the sauce droplet, which jumps from the stilled fork and collides with the table's previously immaculate surface. The white cloth hadn't been her wisest choice today. With restraint known only to nuns, Ziva will let it linger, a splash of unexpected color on life's dull palate. Much like him.

"Preaching to the choir," Tony informs, "means wasting a sermon on people who're already converted."

The explanation sifts slowly through her Americana filter. "An indication that we are in agreement?"

"Of course. You had me at _sit and eat_."

His hand is curled around the oversized bowl, challenging anyone who might deprive him of the contents. She doesn't want to smile at this. Facial muscles twitch upward and are just as quickly clamped into subservience. This is supposed to be serious. It was all planned out in her head. Clearly it was a mistake to feed the man first. But that's the only mistake she'll acknowledge. Between Abby's incessant questions and Gibbs' lack of them, Ziva has chosen the path of guilt refusal. After all, no one asked her to sign Rule Twelve in blood.

But her partner had entered the apartment tonight with the clenched shoulders of someone who had hefted a massive weight but could locate nowhere to set it down. So the burden traveled with him all day, a load she found at once ridiculous and slightly endearing. But only slightly. Worry has been his co-pilot, which a little pasta has tricked him into ditching. Well, truthfully it's quite a lot of pasta. Like her mother, Ziva is not especially good at pampering others and thus her sense of proportion goes awry. She's trying to help diminish the pile but there'll be leftovers for days. Or, if Tony spends the night, until breakfast.

It's a rather girlfriend-ish thing to do, actually, a thought that feeds on her skin like a tick as she chokes on mid-priced wine. Tony's sauce droplet thus makes an instant roommate of the falling thin red liquid.

"If you die now," the concerned man notes as he pats her back, "I was never here."

Dragging a few breaths through her nose, Ziva clears her newly raw throat and unfurls a resigned expression, which is difficult to sell when the target is otherwise engaged. The death grip on the fork remains, even as she'd been gasping. Would he have weighed performing the Heimlich against the continuation of his meal?

"I'll thank you to leave my corpse dressed. And unmolested." Swallowing against the sudden nervousness that a casual sleeping arrangement should not warrant, Ziva begins anew. "Tony, we must be in unison."

"If we're united," he says, "why am I the only one having a fresh will notarized?"

Because she has a firm grasp on the right to not fret. "Gibbs will believe me when I explain how you gave me a stray."

"That's 'led you astray' and no one thinks you're that innocent. Except, and I mention this because it's disturbing, McGee."

"And now we both have seconds."

Tony grimaces. "No, I don't think I could eat another course."

"Not seconds of food." This level of perpetual exasperation cannot be healthy. "Seconds. Like people chosen by duelers to stand by them."

"If McGee's your second, who's mine?"

Those traitorous facial muscles jolt into a grin with the abruptness of a release spring. "Abby."

Conversations with Abby are tricky on several levels. Pop culture references and winding rambles are sewn between frantic movements and the spontaneous and vice-like hug. Equally confining and comforting. But today's verbal gymnastics had Ziva so wound up, it made her want to cook...

**…...**

_It had started out in a traditional Abby dialect, possibly the result of Ziva entering the lab without a caffeinated offering. The minions of supposition are often pacified by a sizable container while a lack of beverage has been known to devolve Abby's sentences into the sort of endless Congo line that commas aren't invited to join._

"_I just want you to know that Tony already knows that I know that Gibbs knows." It's a constant marvel that the girl can sustain life without requiring breath. "So you may want to get used to ducking because hiding things promises projectiles of LJG caliber."_

"_No_ _hiding is taking place. No anything is taking place."_

_If the doubtful state of uh-huh came with an expression, Abby was affixing it to her face with industrial glue. Ziva, caught between 'it's not what you think' and 'it's none of your business,' remembered there was an actual, non-confessional reason for her to be there._

"_Did you pull anything we can use from the doll?"_

"_Totally found a strand of hair stuck to the tiny apron pocket. And since we took samples from the family already, I ruled them out as owners of Follicle A. But the doll's dress was a tragedy and could've picked up the hair from another unrelated source. Like being dropped on the floor of, you know, a locked restroom."_

_Abby's stealth is as natural as a spray-on tan, packaged with all the care that a starved kitten generates for a trapped mouse. Does one ignore the looming implications or meet the train willfully on its own tracks? Ziva opted to stick her foot out and trip the train._

"_Private conversations behind closed doors have value only to participants and insolent eavesdroppers."_

"_Except that you guys always pick places that're supposed to be open to the public. I mean, I might've had to go. Besides, no audible conversation and lots of... thuds require investigation by concerned parties."_

"_I am aware of no... thuds." Mostly because her ears had been distinctly busy absorbing their mutually labored breathing. "What are you getting at?"_

_It's one thing to drizzle insinuations but countering with directness makes Abby uncomfortable, indicated by her dark eyes watching with ever-widening circumference as Ziva's arms slowly crossed, hip thrust out at an angle to suggest Ziva had topped off her tank of estrogen-annoyance._

"_See, here's the thing." Releasing her hold on the computer mouse, Abby's hands were free for spectacularly hazardous gesturing. "Tony's not a smart dumb guy, he's a dumb smart guy. You know?"_

"_Not remotely."_

"_It's the law of degrees in confluence with a tumultuous inner psyche."_

"_Americans should settle on just one type of English."_

_Sighing, Abby let her flailing hands rest. "Tony seems tough, right? But he gets hurt kinda easily. Sucky byproduct of investing in the wrong person or the wrong situation. I mean, not that I'm saying you're the wrong person, but the circumstance?" She tacks on the sound effect equivalent of a shrug. "He doesn't exactly have a market strategy, you know?"_

"_You assume we have a circumstance to invest in." Ziva's jaw worked on the gristle of misdirection. "And does Tony know that you defend him with a comparison to an incompetent stock broker?"_

_Had it been less sincere, Abby's whisper would have been simpering. "He knows I care. That forgives a lot of bad analogies. And I care about you too, but plenty of people will worry about you. But who'll worry about Tony if I don't?"_

_Dear Lord, when did casual sex become a sanctioned study on concern quotients? "Why are we worrying?"_

"_Because if it goes south, so does he. Or north. Or west. Or wherever cities start with his newest favorite letter."_

_Abby's the last person Ziva would expect to let her memory fall back that far. And she realized that, despite the fortress constructed to hold in such unsightly thoughts, they'll simply have to talk. Tonight. There shall be food. Her hands were itching to knead something violently._

"_Those random flights of his were years ago, Abby. You know that."_

"_S'like riding a bike." As though that explains everything._

_That particular idiom is not unknown to Ziva, which was unfortunate for Abby because asking for clarification would have taken the shirt-pressing steam out of Ziva's resentment. It had been terribly rude to march out of the lab that way, trailing her indignation behind like an Irish Traveler veil._

_But as Abby said, caring forgives a lot of similes. Or whatever._

**…_..._**

"That looked like a flashback in progress," Tony teases when Ziva blinks back into the silence. His utensil has completed its tyranny of the bowl and now wavers between them, weapon-like. "Does it come with Cliffnotes?"

"I was just thinking..."

"I don't care." The coil of his voice, snappish for reasons other than anger, carries him around the kitchen island. He relieves her of the fork that she'd been hovering over her pasta long enough to form cobwebs. "I don't want to talk about McGee or Abby. And definitely not Gibbs." A kiss is deposited on her shoulder and Ziva considers the wisdom of short-term investments. "You're right. I'm worrying over nothing. And now I'm done talking."

"And instead?"

"Instead I want to tempt you out of your decision to not be naked for me."

And he does because, really, what defense does she have? He should need a permit and possibly legislation to allow such methods to be employed. But one sliver of her brain, the part not focused on delectable connections with him, turns over the leaf of concern and lets the sunshine of anxiety burn its tender underbelly. She recognizes the shape and form of the worry; it's the one she'd stolen from him.

Abby always says Ziva has mad skills. It appears, with his hands finally releasing their burdens in order to hoist her up, that her skills are simply maddening.


	6. Taking Root

**Just Add Fuel**

**6**

This occupation sees the snooze button as a crime against the punctuality of victims, though not many bodies give up their prone position if they're kept waiting too long. Corpses also tend to be devoid of impatience. The same cannot be said for bosses. Thus Tony has trained his hand to strike out against blaring technology a single time, ensuring that only one segment of nine minutes is allowed to float into blissfully wasteful territory. The opening of leaden lids is profoundly difficult on mornings like this; the orange strands of pre-dawn creeping across an otherwise empty bed.

Unrepentant factions of the body may insist on rising, but it's not as enjoyable to tame alone.

Her pillow, a connotation suggesting he's transferred ownership of half of the set, has retained a shadow of a cavern. It's practically erotic, this evidence that her head had been cradled there. That, along with the remnant of sweet lotion hitchhiking on the breeze, adds mass to this early pleasantness. She leaves little but an indent and will likely begrudge giving him that much. Giving is an activity usually confined to the diameter of the mattress. And the occasional table. And preferred carpet sections. And once on the counter but that was neither planned nor painless. Still, something remains, minuscule reminders that they've not only stepped over the line in sack-race unison, but have gained some sort of victory.

Casual, this is the word they keep volleying back and forth like a battered badminton birdie. It warbles through the static air, edges frayed and sullied from hard use, landing in unpredictable places. Uncertainty may lurk in the crevices of this non-entity but on the whole, Tony is prepared to anoint his current emotional sphere as _splendid_. A McGee word, surely. As if the odd sensation of contentment can be revisited by maintaining the muddle, Tony departs the bed at the conclusion of his nine minute allotment but is careful not to disturb the sheets on the far side. There, an outline where her leg might have been tangled. There, a crease that may have crossed over her hip. The physical evidence will rest in the folds a while longer.

In the midst of a purposely cool shower, he realizes that one) it isn't he who put that travel-sized cucumber vanilla gel in the caddy and two) it isn't discovery by peers that had him so fearful yesterday. Well, not entirely anyway. There's something extremely unpleasant about the red-handed state. Maybe he shouldn't try so hard? But Ziva had set concern over coworker reactions to rest with a Mossad-etched 'who cares' that scoffs at the opinions of others, including Gibbs and the cosmic blankey of governmental policies which, and she mentioned this more than once last night, are as hazy as Tony's movie references.

Although, as much as she'd sought to bolster his confidence in their right to be... whatever they were, there was that odd note hitting the backstroke of Ziva's voice. It said that, if faced with inquisition, she doesn't truly believe he can stand up to Gibbs. He'd like to think she's wrong. He hopes they won't have to find out. Still, somewhere between the faintly undercooked meal and her fairly over-eager hands, he'd been sold on the notion that they're doing nothing wrong. Well, not entirely anyway. There's something delightfully uncivilized about the red-assed state. Maybe he shouldn't have spanked so hard?

Damn... shower's not cold enough.

The suit is removed from the closet, the hanger digging into his palm as the garment is considered. Something best described as internal fizziness plays fashion critic and rejects the somber cloth. He will wear jeans with a pale Henley; a relaxed wardrobe to compliment his Ziva-inspired mood. A few carbs and a lot of creative exertion were the means by which his crafty partner had hijacked his worry and chucked it overboard, saving him from crow's feet and premature gray in a single fit of lust. Well, less single and more... ongoing. Which makes her less ninja and more goddess. On the drive to the yard, Tony dodges skillfully through the gridlock while tasting several new names for Ziva.

He test drives the word 'girlfriend' and nearly careens off the freeway.

That's not supposed to be the destination, which implies that they even have one beyond the after-case romps and midday lavatory encounters. Stress-relieving. No questions. No guilt. No 'thing.' A totally thing-less physical expression of a soul impacting attraction.

If such a thing, an amalgamation of easy years and hazardous minutes, can qualify as passionate detachment.

Casual, as a standard English word, is easy enough to pronounce. Not too many letters scrambling away the meaning. But they've yet to lay out the composite grid of definition. As a practiced informal dater, Tony knows what form the word took in the teens-through-mid-life era, the latter half currently in progress and tipping toward crisis. The decidedly male recipe has been boiled down and simmered into a basic formula of impersonal interludes, invoking little emotion and involving few names. Meet at bar, give the eye, rip off clothes, forget by dawn. Which was considered a good night by his estimation. But holding Ziva up to the flickering wattage of that standard, her unique signature casts a glow that chases away the merits of moral negligence.

Casual is the medium with which he paints his existence. The resulting art is a bit sloppy but personal taste is everything. Except the tones don't fit her, the colors appearing too false, dull, trite. In these nights, she has smeared the paint to the point that he's willing to give her more than an impartial splash and dash. And yet... and yet...

What else is there?

And that, rather than bosses or politics, is the problem. Tony is an impressionist's canvas of romantic nonchalance. Anything harder falls under the 'consider only in final spiral of drunken loneliness' tab on his bachelor To Do list. Certain skills are lacking. No, certain skills are omitted entirely from his genetic code.

As the car is squeezed into a narrow space, someone's Escalade infringing on his line, Tony witnesses the careless feelings generated by a frisky night drain from his pours. The root of true worry begins a slow crawl down into the soil, burrowing past the stubbornly protective crust and nesting in the fertile core of his overactive brain.

It hasn't just taken root. It's taken over.

When did this enter the hall of relationship potential on its way to a roomful of serious? Casual's not supposed to step foot in that chamber, let alone try to redecorate his priorities. If she doesn't fit the mold of one-night-stand rinse/repeat, and if marketing her as his current flame is too unsettling, what's left? The stream of curses at his own indulgence begins soundly with Profanities Starting With A and curls alphabetically through a multitude of cop-tested entries, ending when the elevator doors open to the relative normalcy of the bullpen.

Holy Mother of Mustang, why is everyone staring at him?


End file.
